Error with lion led to farmer's death

James Janega, Tribune staff reporterCHICAGO TRIBUNE

Forgetfulness and inexperience led to the death of a Downstate man as he cleaned a lion cage on his southern Illinois farm, a task he had never done alone before, and one he began without locking the gate behind him.

The report completes the story that gained wide attention with Abell's death on Feb. 12, 2004, and details the history of Cougar Bluff Enterprise, the exhibition farm that was the retirement dream of Abell, 52, and his wife, Kathie, 51.

The farm is tucked against a hilltop road on the border of a sprawling national forest, in hills a million years old, where the loudest noises are the wind in the pines and the calls of wolves and wild cats at feeding time.

But the seductive dream took a turn that day in 2004 when Kathie Abell left to run errands and Al Abell set out to tidy the enclosure of a 379-pound, 5-year-old African Barbary lion they had named Simba.

Kathie Abell returned to the farm late in the afternoon to find her husband missing. The lion was pacing the hilltop outside his enclosure in agitation, the rest of the animals on the farm were frightened and uneasy.

Horrified, she ran inside and called the sheriff.

Each year, Kathie Abell renewed a license with the USDA to exhibit wolves and big cats that included Simba, a collection of cougars and a bobcat. The Abells' farm had last been inspected on Jan. 5, 2004, weeks before Al Abell's death.

While there is nothing ordinary in a collection of pens housing eight cougars, a lion, a bobcat and four wolves, there was nothing illegal or substandard, either, Bernard Flerlage, a Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service inspector, concluded in that report. He gave Cougar Bluff a passing inspection just as he had each year since at least 2001.

Still, only Kathie Abell was licensed to care for the animals, even though the couple shared their lives with big cats and slept in a trailer no more than 20 feet from the nearest cougar enclosures.

Kathie Abell and official reports noted that Al Abell had been in poor health in the winter of 2003-04, and was growing forgetful. The couple had been married for 29 years, and raised horses together long before turning to exotic animals.

The two had raised Simba since he was a cub, and Al Abell must have felt comfortable around the almost full-grown male lion, Kathie Abell said.

Among the things the government oversees with animal exhibitors is how powerful animals like lions and other big cats are enclosed.

Big cats are expected to have two pens: A larger one with shelter in which to live and a smaller "shift pen" into which the animal can be moved while the larger enclosure is cleaned. The gate between the two must have a lock, and anyone who works around the animals must be trained in how to safely move the animals from one pen to the other. Typically, experts say, the maneuver is done by at least two people.

But on Feb. 12, 2004, Al Abell was alone when he moved the lion from its enclosure and into the shifting pen, and "did not lock [the] shift pen while cleaning shelter and surrounding area," the animal care inspection report noted later.

"He never cleaned any large-field enclosure by himself till this tragic event occurred," the report said.

Police reports, as well as interviews with Kathie Abell and southern Illinois law enforcement officials shortly after Al Abell died revealed the tense twilight standoff that day between nervous police officers and an agitated lion on the edge of Shawnee National Forest's 277,000 acres.

It took a half-hour for police officers to fly up the gravel road to the farm after Kathie Abell's call.

In that time, a frantic Kathie Abell had found a tranquilizer gun, but not the darts.

When Hardin County sheriff's deputies arrived, she knew her dog had been killed, but couldn't find her husband.

The Abells' menagerie of wildcats, lorded over by a limping 8-year-old cougar named Freddy, paced and cowered in their pens. The wolves and several huskies cried from cages at the tree line below.

Standing in the Abells' fenced yard with his back to Freddy's cage, Hardin County Sheriff's Deputy Brian Reed aimed an AK-47 at Simba.

Deputy Chad Vinyard and Cave In Rock Police Officers Mike and Terry Dutton ran up behind him, Vinyard on a radio to the county's chief deputy, Bill Stark, asking for ideas.

Stark was speeding in a car with Sheriff Carl Cox, who said he and Stark peered into the failing February light at the dense forest rushing past their car and made a decision.

"We didn't want the animal loose," Cox said.

Stark told them that if they had a clear shot, to take it. "Just make it a kill shot," he told them over the radio.

The police officers turned to Abell. Fifteen years of raising big cats came to a single tearful nod. Vinyard counted to three.

At the first volley, Simba jumped 10 feet, two wounds in his head. Slinking toward a shed, the lion was hit again by Dutton and Reed. Officers came to within a few paces as the lion finally collapsed, and two more shots rang out. Simba stopped breathing.

Vinyard's voice crackled over the radio.

"The lion's down," he said.

That was when Kathie Abell found her husband, noted Reed and Dutton. "We heard Kathie Abell screaming approximately 50 yards away," Dutton wrote.

Paramedics tried CPR, then evacuated Al Abell by air without ever hearing a sound from his lungs. His skin was cold, dry and pale. The coroner determined he had died in minutes, his life pouring out the bite wound in his left thigh.

Kathie Abell gave the lion's carcass to zoology students at Southern Illinois University, where the heaping, frozen body was thawed and dissected two months later.